Two character markers on graphs

[#1]

Hello JMP Community,

I have an interesting challenge that I thought would be easy to fix, yet here we are two hours later! 

I have a data set with different experiments on rows, and the resultant data sorted by column; specifically, concentrations of different elements, like Cu, Co, Cr, Ca, etc. You may be able to guess where this is going....

I want to generate a plot with date (of experiment) as the X axis, and elemental concentration on the Y axis. I want to include all element columns in the response, and differentiate by unique markers for each element. The problem is, JMP appears to only allow a single character for markers, so I can't actually us "Cu" as a marker.

I tried to work around this by creating a custom font and installing on my PC where u = Cu, a = Ca, etc., but when I select this font for the marker font in preferences, it doesn't appear to actually be using this font. Does anyone know how the font assignment works, and if there is a way to force this to actually process? The really bizarre and frustrating thing is that when selecting the font, it shows my custom font in the preview, but then doesn't appear to actually be using it once selected. I've attached a picture of the preview, you can see where it should show "AaBbCc..." it instead shows "ACaBbCc...", yet once I accept this change, the marker still just shows up as "a" and not "Ca" on the plot.

I also looked at using images as markers as described here: https://www.jmp.com/support/help/en/16.0/index.shtml#page/jmp/use-images-as-markers.shtml#, but it appears that you can only assign marker images by row, not by column. Go figure... 

Any ideas of how to work around this issue would be greatly appreciated!

[#2 · Accepted solution]

I am going to take a guess on what the problem is. If I am wrong, just let me know.

Although I made up some numbers, I think your data looks something like this:

If I am correct, stack your element concentration columns so that your table looks like this:

Now you can follow the help article that you found to create special symbols using the Element column to determine which symbol to use when. Or, turn on the Label feature for the Element column, and label each row of the table. So that your graph can look something like this:

[#3]

Hi Dan,

This is a great solution! Unfortunately, due to the nature of the data output from my systems, formatting in this way would take a lot of manual effort. I could probably develop a macro to reformat pre-import into JMP, but I actually found another way! 

I created a custom font and assigned the needed symbols to unique characters, and then assigned that font as the marker font in preferences. So now, I assign a single character to the marker, and the font produces a 2 character symbol, e.g. a = Ca, e = Fe, etc. Not the most "elegant" solution, but it works well and I don't have to modify the data format! 

Also sorry for the late reply; is there a way to have this forum email a notification of replies?

Thanks again!

[#4]

You can select the notifications you want by going to My settings>Subscriptions and Notifications.>Notification Settings

[#5]

I'm glad you found a solution that works for you. And, as @statman  indicated, you can have the system email you with replies. That is how I knew you responded!